‘Not Everything in Black and White Makes Sense’: Differing Definitions of Difference

This chapter aims to examine the slippery discourses of race and ethnicity, and the particularities of defining difference on both sides of the Anglo-American Atlantic. Hence the reference to the 1997 advertising campaign for Guinness beer, ‘not everything in black and white makes sense’, seemed apt given the array of terminologies which have been used to describe non-whiteness, and the difficulties that each has had in articulating it throughout history into the 21st century.